Masks
by owlkward
Summary: She could only hope her sacrifice had been enough to get them to safety.


Masks

She could only hope her sacrifice had been enough to get them to safety.

As they escorted her into her holding cell, she could no longer feel the earth as she walked. Feel its life in her every step. Weirdly enough as the world around her felt so dead and silent, she had never been more aware of her own living body. Her heart, like a drum, each beat ringing in her ears. Each labored breath she took felt strange and fascinating. Her own wheeze resonating through her body. Almost as if these things she unconsciously did everyday were foreign to her.

Locked inside her cell, everything became painfully clear. She, Lin Bei Fong, was no longer an earthbender, no longer a metalbender. These things defined her. They were her identity and, something more, one of the last links connecting her to her mother. But she was not broken; she refused to be. She forced her face into a mask of an unnerving calm. So completely unlike the other prisoners, who screamed and cried and offered to give information in exchange for freedom. All their faces showing desperation and a selfish sense of self preservation.

The days in that cell that followed were torture. Rather than leering at her, the equalists walked by. They paid her no heed. The greatest insult they could give her was to not regard her as a threat. The metal bars of this cage taunted her. She was once able to tear metal apart with a flick of her wrist. But she continued to keep that mask of calm on, even when the monster with a mask passed her cell. She was playing his game, and she would not lose.

Each night brought nightmares of that man and of his mask and each morning jarred her back to reality. A reality where the earth felt dead but she was alive. Those days felt like an eternity. She was trapped inside not only her cell but her own mind. Through everything, she kept the mask on. All Their attempts to break her spirit had only succeeded at strengthening her resolve. She was a woman of steel. The one who would not bend, not waver, show no weakness. Her mask was one of steel, grim and subtly taunting her would be torturers, with its sinister shine, so unlike their glowing masks, with polished gold and red designs that they wore so proudly. The design of it so pompous and over thought.

But the day came. After not knowing, and being so detached from all the suffering around her and only knowing her own, the day came as a shock. The person who set her free was none other than Bumi, the crazy boy she knew as a child. He told her that though the enemy himself had escaped, the equalists had withdrawn. No longer emboldened by the actions of their former leader, who turned out to be the very thing he tried to eradicate. His chatter filled with exaggerated (as she was told by his protege) details of the battle to victory.

When he found out what had happened to her, he immediately fell silent. All his talk of victory, lost. His face had turned to a mask of pity and sadness. Unless it wasn't a mask… but she could hardly tell anymore. Whatever it was she detested it. When he told Tenzin, all she saw was the exact same thing. The same mask of shame and guilt showing in his every feature. He blamed himself for needing to be protected. What they didn't understand was that she had no regrets. She had done what was necessary for the survival of a race. It was a small price to pay for his safety, as well as his family's. She tried to assure them, all of them. None of them believed her.

The only one who had enough determination, or in the eyes of everyone else, no tact at all, to ask her why she had done what she did, and why she had sacrificed herself, was the Avatar. She probably knew loss; she had lost her bending too hadn't she?

In fairness, Korra knew what she was doing. She had asked her in front of everyone else. Their sharp gasps echoed across the room after she had asked.

She said that her father had lost his life in the early days of Republic city when crime rates were sky high and the small police force was spread thinner than air. He had been married to Toph Beifong for only 3 years, and never knew his daughter and Toph Beifong had died in line of duty. That day she never came home was the day Yakone had been apprehended. Her family had been torn apart and the shreds that remained were lit on fire.

In this company she finally let the mask fall, she let her mouth be free of the scowl, and her eyes show their exhaustion.

She said that she wouldn't stand to see the same thing happen to anyone else.


End file.
